After another night marred with crinkling chocolate wrappers and a severe soreness in my glute, by the time we got up for breakfast, I’d well and truly abandoned the idea of a 22km hike. Maybe if we were there for longer, I’d do it.
Maybe.
We went for breakfast then joined the group in the lobby for the start of our 8am full-day tour of the national park.
On the lookout for the Patagonia Big Five
What, you may ask, does the Patagonia Big Five consist of? Well, definitely nothing as big and grand as the African Big Five, but still, special enough.
The Patagonian Five include condor, guanaco (llama thing), puma, rhea (large flightless bird similar to an ostrich), and huemel (a deer).
Our tour guide took us into the eastern part of the national park first, stopping at a few lookouts along the way.
The three lakes in the national park are known by their colours: grey, green, and blue.
The colours relate to the amount of sediment in them with the most amount of sediment being the closest to the glacier so it goes grey, green, then blue.
I’m pretty sure we saw all three during our time there.
And there’s a confluence of the river near the hotel where the blue and the green meet and travel side by side for a while. (Look it up on Google Earth as from the ground it’s not that impressive.)
We looked at mountains, waterfalls, lakes, and rivers throughout the tour, stopping every so often for ten minutes at a time to take a few photos.
Water and rocks aside, however, the main draw was the chance to see wildlife.
We saw flamingos at the third stop (along with some swans and ducks). We saw three flamingos in the Galapagos Islands (Isabela) but saw a lot more this time. And they were pink.
Next we pretty quickly saw herds of guanacos. The four we saw the day before was the mere tip of the guanaco iceberg as we saw ever greater numbers throughout the day.
During one of the stops we saw a condor soaring high above but later in the morning we were treated to a big flock of them.
Did you know that condors hang out together? I didn’t.
There were about 20 of them sitting on the crest of a hill, taking off and landing as they wished, their massive wings taking them high into the air.
So that’s two of the five…
We left the national park at one stage to cut down another road and re-enter the park on a northern road. It was while we were outside the national park that we saw three vans parked on the side of the road, a good indication that there’s something to see.
We pulled up behind them and looked out the window, up the side of a small hill covered in shrubs towards what looked like a white rock.
Then its ears moved.
Puma spotted!
We crept quietly out of the van and scaled the hill on the other side of the road from the sleeping puma.
All speaking in excited whispers, we watched this reclining mound of mountain lion.
We’d brought binoculars with us and I had a long lens on my camera so managed to get a good view of it.
It was lying on its side, the underside of its white-furred chin catching the sunlight. And then we noticed that at the bottom end of the puma was a set of small ears. We’d found a mother and her cub!
The mother roused, lifted her head, yawned (exposing her long canines), obviously aware of us and the danger we possibly posed to her cub.
The cub didn’t move much and when the mother stood up and walked towards the right and behind a mound of rocks, the cub completely disappeared, hiding deeper in the scrub.
Unfortunately, it looked like the mother was injured as she limped along to find a new spot to lie down.
This put a slight dampener on the experience as we wondered what would happen to her and her cub if she was as injured as she looked and couldn’t hunt.
There wasn’t anything we could do, however, and so, sated with our puma sighting, we climbed back into the van and continued on our way.
We stopped again to look at an impressive herd of guanacos standing in front of a beautiful vista of the mountains, and then later stopped again at a waterfall for morning tea.
The drive back to the hotel then took an hour and we arrived at around 1pm.
Any feelings of disappointment about missing out on the 22km hike had been completely obliterated.
Afternoon trek to Mirador Isla de Los Hielos
Lunch done we got back into the van for the second half of the day trip, this time taking in part of the western area of the park to see the Grey Glacier.
The van took us to the same place we went to the day before for Chorillo Pingo but this time we went right instead of left.
First stop: suspension bridge across the raging Grey River.
Only six people are allowed across at a time so everyone was very nervous but it barely swung so it didn’t feel like we were in danger at all.
We then walked through the forest, spotted a woodpecker busy at work, and continued down to the water where a rocky sandbar connects the beach to an island (I guess) and bisects the river/lakes in two.
The walk took a lot longer than expected and the wind was blowing a gale. It was longer than it looked.
We reached the other side, climbed up the rocky trail, and made it to the mirador where there were not one but two big icebergs sitting in the water.
Stunning stuff! They looked unreal, like someone had painted them onto an animation cell and stuck them over the view.
There were a few people on the tour who’d never seen icebergs so this was super exciting for them.
We also looked at the Grey Glacier, which is about 100 metres thick and losing about 5 metres every year. It was far in the distance and takes about two days to walk to. I was happy with our view.
We then turned around and walked back. Glen and I ran a little bit of it but it barely made the return journey any faster.
We tumbled back into the van, returned to the hotel, and relaxed for a little bit. I joined a few people in the bar for some cocktails — a pisco sour and some vodka thing. Both very strong. I was very merry.
The number of people at dinner was much depleted so we were allowed to order a la carte this time.
During dinner all plans for the next day’s departure we made. We preordered our boxed lunch as the drive to Punta Arenas was going to take five hours.
And then we went to bed, packed our stuff and went to sleep.
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?